An interview with Mort Kondrake

I'd always thought of Kondracke as a liberal, and because I'd like to believe there are still reasonable ones out there, I'm a little sorry to learn he eschews the label.

What I find especially interesting, though, is his discussion of the end of the Vietnam War. To so many, our fighting there was so self-evidently wrong that the consequences of our getting out don't bear examining. I'm glad to hear a former liberal say that leaving our allies in the lurch was what tore it for him.

All the more so since for many liberals today, the domestic protest against Vietnam is the template they cherish, and wish to recreate to get us out of Iraq. To me the best parallel between this war and Vietnam is the bloodbath that would follow our stopping short of victory. After which its foes will claim that they couldn't foresee this entirely predictable consequence, and that anyway it's the fault of the warmongers who enraged the murderers by taking them on in the first place.